FarmVille cheats and tips: Five ways to level up fast in FarmVille

Leveling up in FarmVille depends on how quickly you can plant and harvest crops as well as how many neighbors you have, which are basically friends who are also playing the game. Virtual farmers earn experience points based on plowing, harvesting, visiting and helping neighbors.

Before jumping into our five tips, here's a 30-second overview of what certain items do: Cows and goats give milk, chickens give eggs, turtles give eggs, ducks give feathers, horses give horsehair, sheep give wool, pigs give truffles, rabbits give angora wool. Some animals such as cats and bulls don't yield anything but allow you to pet them or brush them. The bull will sometimes yield a baby calf when placed in the dairy farm with the cows. Another quick tip -- by adding a diary farm and chicken coop you can harvest 20 cows or chicken at once, which means making more money with less effort.

Now that you've inhaled that information, here are five tips that will take you from casual gardener to fearless farmer in no time.
1. Plant your crops according to how much time you can devote to playing the game. If you have a period of time where you won't be able to play, plant crops that takes 8 or 12 hours to grow. If you are not going to be going into the game for several days, plants crops that take several days to grow. That way you won't have to worry about withered crops, which means no cash or achievement points for you. The more crops your harvest the more experience points you'll get.

2. Try trapping your farmer to harvest or plow faster. Waiting for your farmer to follow your mouse clicks can slow down progress. One way to speed up plowing and harvesting is to trap your farmer using hay bales or fencing. To block in your farmer with hay bales, stack one bale on each side of your farmer. Your farmer will plow and harvest from where you trap him/her, and you won't have to wait for your farmer to catch up. This is especially helpful for players with large farms.

3. Plant trees in areas of your farm that are unusable to crops. I like to plant my trees long the top edge of my plot. Since the tress are tall, they can obscure your view, making it hard to see if crops or animals are ready to harvest. Placing them at the top of the screen ensures that nothing gets blocked from view. Trees and animals do not yield experience points so if you're trying to level up fast, keep these to a minimum.

5. Resist the urge to buy animals or trees since these items do not give experience points (or much return on your investment). It's better to just receive these items as gifts and save your coins and FarmVille dollars for special or seasonal items or a land expansion.

Got any other tips for people who want to level up fast in FarmVille? Leave them in the comments area below.